IT HAPPENED 50 years ago this week on a snow and wind-lashed Frinton beach – a
near-disaster of epic proportions!
Amid the horrendous weather on the night of Wednesday
19th January 1966, the young team on board pop pirate ship Radio Caroline were relaxing a few miles off the Essex coast, blissfully unaware they were in extreme peril.
Unbeknown to them, their 470-ton ship, the Mi Amigo, was dragging its anchor and
drifting out of control towards land. The vessel inched nearer and
nearer to a Frinton and Walton coastline lined with concrete and wooden breakwaters
and groynes. It would need a miracle to avoid smashing into them, with potentially
fatal consequences.
By some bizarre coincidence,
that week’s Top 20 pop chart
on Caroline had included songs whose titles seemed to foretell the drama:
* My Ship Is Coming In – Walker Brothers (Philips)
* The Water is Over My Head – Rockin’ Berries (Piccadilly)
* Let’s Hang On – Four Seasons (Philips)
* A Hard Day’s Night – Peter Sellers (Parlophone)
Spot the omens there? It
seems somebody been trying to tell them trouble was ahead!
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| * Frinton beach on the morning after |
The drama started after nightfall when a swivel rope
controlling the three anchors holding the vessel in international waters
suddenly broke in the Force 8 gale. In mountainous waves the ship began to
drift and was tossed around dangerously.
Coastguards soon spotted what was happening, but the crew
and DJs sleeping or watching TV inside the ship were used to choppy seas and
noticed nothing unusual. The crew member on ‘anchor watch’ was hampered by
blinding snow and hadn’t a clue they’d broken loose.
The coastguards phoned Caroline’s agent Percy Scadden in
Harwich, who raced to Frinton seafront and began flashing his car headlights at
the distant ship in a futile attempt to alert them to the danger. In
desperation he then phoned Anglia TV who broadcast a message of warning. Of the
thousands who heard it, none were on board Radio Caroline.
Meanwhile fierce easterly winds took the ship relentlessly coastwards
and it looked like the game was up when the 133-foot vessel headed straight for
a concrete groyne; “That’s it – they’ve had it now,” was the reported comment
of Coastguard station officer Edward Shreeve at this point. But somehow the
vessel skimmed over the hazard, barely touching it.
At around 11pm most on board were watching the wrestling on TV
when a crewman rushed in with the news they were hopelessly adrift. Once up on deck
all could see they were dangerously close to the bright lights of Essex, and
getting closer. Attempts to start the
engines came far too late to help; the ship was clearly going to be hurled on
to land, the only question was exactly where and how bad the wreck would be.
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| * "The gods parked the ship up very nicely!" |
Suddenly came a crunching sound as the huge propellor churned up
shingle and the vessel came to a shuddering halt 50 yards from Frinton
beach. Parachute flares and a line rocket lit up the area as a rescue
squad went into action on the beach, working several hours to rig up a breeches
buoy lifeline. Equipment was ferried over a treacherous 15-foot snow-covered
sea-wall, while Walton lifeboat and other vessels stood by in deeper water.
Twenty-foot waves raged, the snow continued and it was a hairy
operation. Taken off in various states of shock were nine DJs and crew,
including the soon-to-be-famous Tony Blackburn and Dave Lee Travis. Blackburn
admitted he’d gone first to make sure the press got his photo, and later had to
refute allegations he’d set the whole drama up to get himself publicity!
At 3a.m. the ship – captain and crew still aboard - was
declared high and dry. She had somehow avoided serious shipwreck by not only floating
over one concrete breakwater, but had come ashore right between two wooden
breakwaters, within a gap where one breakwater had been removed years before.
It was the only large gap in over five miles of coastline. Any other stopping
point and the Mi Amigo and those on board might have perished.
Caroline founder Ronan O’Rahilly, in a state of high emotion
on the beach, said the gods had been on their side and had parked his boat up
nicely. The precise location was given as Cheveux de Fries Point, Great
Holland, close to Frinton Golf Club.
Walton coastguards and an 11-strong Life-Saving Corps rescued
nine men in all with the breeches buoy. These were taken to nearby Portobello
Hotel for dry clothes, bed and breakfast and later taxis to Harwich.
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| * Tony Blackburn |
The DJs inevitably got the lion’s share of attention in the next
day’s media, but the real heroes of the hour were rescuers Shreeve, Curtis,
Ward, Hartley, Street, Sayers, Speight and Hipkin.
The beached ship became a real tourist attraction (my own family
was among the visiting hordes!), and hundreds watched a ‘kedging’ operation get
the vessel off the beach on high tide two days later.
She was towed to the Netherlands for a refit, gaining a
generator, more powerful transmitters and an antenna mast extension. Tony Blackburn and others were meanwhile holed
up in the Gables Hotel in Dovercourt waiting for instructions, having heard Caroline’s
boss insist this was all just a temporary problem: “The show must go on!”
.
